KINSTON, NC – If the average sixth grader
isn’t interested in being a nurse or a doctor,
chances are they won’t give a second thought
to a career in health care because they
probably aren’t aware of the other options.
That’s unfortunate. As one of the fastest-growing
career fields, health care includes
hundreds of occupations, many of them far
removed from the nurse and doctor roles.

“You can work in health care and not have
to work with blood or needles or stuff like that.
There’s a whole range of jobs,” says UNC Lenoir
Health Care Human Resources Manager Jimmy
Person, who noted that nurse and doctor are just
two of more than 300 different job descriptions
on file at the rural North Carolina hospital with
just under 1,000 employees. There are positions
in respiratory therapy, radiology, laboratory, IT,
rehabilitation, nutrition services, medical records,
and environmental services, to name a few.

The greatest employee shortage is in nurses
and nurse assistants, which make up nearly
one-third of the entire workforce at UNC Lenoir
Health Care. The hospital is tackling this issue
head-on by working with local school districts
and Lenoir Community College to ensure local
students know about the path to nursing and
the many other available careers in health care.

A group of four nurses recently joined Person
for a panel discussion focused on ways education
could better enlighten and prepare students
for careers in health care. One of the nurse
panelists, Emily Baker, RN and BSN, works directly
with patients. The other three draw from their
experiences as floor nurses when attempting to attract more qualified candidates to the
open positions. Misty Emory is an employment
coordinator, Stephanie Fox is a human relations
generalist, and Laura Guinn is an education
specialist and workforce development coordinator.

All panelists agreed that exposure to a variety
of health care careers at the middle school level
– or even earlier – is necessary to turn the tide.
(See related story, “Joining Forces.”) Hands-on
experiential programs such as Pitsco Education’s
STREAM Missions for elementary (for example,
Being Healthy, Amazing Body, and Body at Work)
and Expeditions for middle level (for example,
Body Blueprint, Bio Research, and Vital Signs) have
been implemented in many schools across
eastern North Carolina through the efforts of
STEM East, an offshoot of the NCEast Alliance.

“I didn’t have anything like that in middle
school. In high school I was in HOSA (Health
Occupations Students of America) and I did
competition one year,” Baker said. “But that’s
the only exposure I got to the health care field
before I went off to college.”

Allowing students to explore health sciences
and careers via collaborative, real-world
experiences in Missions and Expeditions can ignite
a spark of curiosity that carries into high school
where opportunities for deeper dives into specific
careers can occur in CTE courses and pathways.

Guinn invites high school students to visit
the hospital and learn more firsthand. “We’ve
been involved in the Teachers at Work and
Students at Work programs for two years now,
and I coordinate job shadowing. They come in
for a couple of hours and are able to observe
the staff, ask lots of questions, and just learn
about that job to see if they’re interested or if
they’re not interested.”

Emory is particularly interested in better
career exploration opportunities for students
because her son is in his freshman year of high
school and aspires to a career in pharmacy. “I’ve
talked to him about different careers for years,
about the different things that he could do in
hospital settings and in other professions as
well,” she said. “I don’t think that students at the
middle school and even at the high school level
know all of the different options and careers
that are out there. . . . They really don’t have any
idea that you could be a CT tech or you could
be a medical laboratory technologist. They just
don’t have that exposure in schools.”

If early exposure to careers is as essential as
the panelists say, then an important second
step is to get middle school and high school
students to spend time in hospitals and clinics.
“I think hands on in the classroom is great for
learning about critical thinking and working
through problems,” Guinn said. “STEM focuses
more on these student-led activities, which is
great for leadership. But I just think taking them
into the workplace is such an important piece
of preparing them.”

Emory added that students must be taught
about job options in their region, which would
require flexibility to customize curriculum and
course offerings to meet the needs of local
business and industry. “I think that school
systems need to have more local control over
development of curriculum,” she said. “So
much of it now is coming from the legislative
end. Teachers have to get this covered and get
this covered and get this covered. But is that
meeting the needs of the local market and
really exposing students to opportunities?”